James P. RePass Sr.: U.S. stops monitoring railroad threats

With news stories lately about train wrecks involving crude oil — the Bakken crude oil boom is fueling that — you may have wondered what steps were being taken to make sure those cars stay on the...

By James P. RePASS Sr.

BOSTON

With news stories lately about train wrecks involving crude oil — the Bakken crude oil boom is fueling that — you may have wondered what steps were being taken to make sure those cars stay on the track, especially in densely populated urban areas such as Providence or Boston.

I did too, and began digging into it. Quite by accident I discovered some truly bad news, not involving crude oil tankers, but involving so-called “toxic inhalant hazard” cars, which, as it turn out, are far more dangerous.

What I found out is that the Transportation Security Administration, in charge of monitoring those cars, has let a critical rail security system, put in place after 9/11 to monitor toxic cars, shut down.

The railcar tracking system is called the Toxic Inhalant Risk Reduction Verification System (TIHRRVS) and has been supervised by IBM Corp. since its inception. It became operational in 2008. It went dark on or about last Dec. 3, when the TSA let that contract lapse, even though the system’s operation is mandated by federal law and essential to rail security.

In short, even as the Federal Railroad Administration has been trying to add crude oil tank cars to the watch list, the very system that could do that has been allowed to crash by the TSA.

The TSA confirmed to Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that the system has indeed gone “dark.” Senator Markey’s office began investigating the matter in early May at the request of this reporter.

It is unclear what steps must be taken to re-start the system, a central part of the nation’s security response to 9/11. One industry source has said that it could be re-started within 24 hours, if so ordered by the president, but that could not be confirmed at press time.

The program enabled the TSA to track, monitor and verify car location so that it could measure “dwell time” — how long a car has been sitting still — of TIH rail cars. The longer such a car sits in an insecure area, the more of a target it can become, especially in heavily populated High Threat Urban Areas. There are 46 such designated regions in the United States, including Providence.

Since 2009, the TIHRRVS system has enabled TSA’s surface transportation inspectors to know at all times the location of toxic inhalant railcar shipments and in whose custody they are — railroad, shipper or interchange point — as they cross the country, especially regarding their travel through a High Threat Urban Area.

Under the Rail Transportation Security Act of 2008, the TSA is required to carry out chain-of-custody inspections. The TIHRRVS system let the TSA independently determine the location of railcars and perform inspections to ensure safe conditions and compliance with the law, and to determine who had custody of the car.

The data needed to perform either systematic or unannounced inspections — real-time and near real-time information — are no longer available to TSA inspectors, as it has confirmed to Senator Markey.

Industry experts also note that the now-dark system, if functioning, would provide the core of a first-responder alert system.

Until the system went dark, TSA inspectors had the ability, in the event of a derailment or toxic leak, to immediately notify local first responders of the exact contents of a train on a precise car-by-car basis, helping pinpoint the most dangerous cars, and informing first responders what kind of HazMat protective clothing and gas masks to wear when approaching those rail cars. Inspectors could also tell them how to respond to any leaks or fires. Some chemicals will explode if water from a fire hose is sprayed on them in open air.

Now even that capability is gone. Also, while the railroads themselves still know what is on or in their trains, the TSA’s real-time GPS data on car location, gathered from transponders installed on those cars under a Federal Emergency Management Agency program, is not available to the railroads.

Neither the TSA nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to repeated requests for information. Calls and emails to the White House press office also went unreturned.

James P. RePass Sr. (jprepass@nationalcorridors.org), a regular contributor, is chairman of the National Corridors Initiative. He trained as a journalist at The Washington Post, The St. Petersburg Times and other papers.

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